Recently John sent me the code for a ResearchBlogging.org widget that he wanted added to his sidebar. While adding the widget I discovered that it was highly uncustomizable . That is to say, it is what it is, and if it doesn't fit the scheme of your blog (height, width, color, etc.), well, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Needless to say, I like my cookies soft and chewy (read: malleable). One solution I hit upon was to piggyback on Research Blogging's twitter account ( ResearchBlogs ) and Twitter's profile widget builder (which enables you to customize, among other things, the widgets colors and dimensions). What's more, Research Blogging's twitter feed includes posts from their News blog . Another minimalist solution was to run a Research Blogging feed ( pick one ) through a pipe where you can then use the badge option to add a somewhat customizable widget to your web page. To compare, here's a page with all 3 options side-by-side . If you hav